"Of course not," your first thought might be. "How will the ability to get cheap DVDs that I won't actually have time to watch mailed out to me within 48 hours help me generate home improvement leads? You're not setting up another pun about that stupid show, are you?"

Not at all. Amazon, in their continued quest to dominate the online marketplace (and possibly the world, with their drone technology), is quietly rolling out Amazon Local...

I was just going to write "a lot!" and be done with it, but apparently that's not very useful. So let's break down some of the biggest factors that influence local search rankings (and lead generation) in this post-Pigeon world of ours.

The major factors remain what you would expect them to be - keywords, domain authority, link frequency and quality. As long as you continue to follow standard tried and true SEO tactics, and ensure that you're...

Have you heard of Porch.com? You can find ads for them in Lowe's across the United States, and it was recently announced that they've raised 65 million dollars in funding. So if you haven't heard of them, now's the time to familiarize yourself. Porch's goal is to become a hub for home improvement business information - users can browse and review local renovation companies, look at photos of projects, look up a home's renovation history and...

Do you have a mobile site? Or, more importantly, is your mobile site any good? Common wisdom says that mobile is a key plank of any business' marketing campaign. But our focus is on generating leads - does mobility help? The truth is, you never know when a potential customer, bored while waiting in line at the grocery store, will start to browse through your services.

If there's one message I will never stop sending, it's that business owners need to stay on top of industry news to maximize their ability to generate leads. SEO, local market advertising, social media strategy... all of this can change overnight, and you need to change along with them. But it isn't always easy to keep up, which is why I've put together a recap of some of my most important posts from 2014.

Keyword Connects’ co-founder Todd Bairstow spoke at the National Association of the Remodeling Industry’s (NARI) Staten Island chapter meeting on February 11. In his remarks, he considered how five different types of homeowners research products for their home online:

The Straight Arrow
The Reputation Detective
The Product Geek
The Price Monster
The Wired Homeowner

It's no secret that small businesses struggle to get their money's worth out of paid online advertising. This is even truer in the home improvement industry, which is often misunderstood by providers who don't take the time to understand that you are looking primarily for leads, not brand recognition. But the hard reality is that paid online marketing is going to grow exponentially for home improvement companies - and it's not getting any...

In ye olde days, by which I mean a few years ago, national home improvement brands didn't put much thought into local marketing. Dealers and franchisees were left to handle the heavy lifting of marketing their products to homeowners. Brands didn't have the marketing muscle or expertise to drive leads for their dealers...and didn't feel much obligation to.

But a lot's changed over the years, and with the advent of Google and the advancement of...

Keyword Connects’ in-house call center reported record call volume during 2014. Its call agents handled 51,500 inbound calls, up from 44,000 during 2013. The Company attributes the 17% increase to continued rapid growth of its client base.

The call center handles calls from homeowners interested in products sold by its 400 home improvement clients exclusively. These calls represent exclusive, high quality sales leads from lead generation...

Do you like Google? Don't bother answering that, because the answer doesn't matter. Whether you like Google or not, they're the dominant force in the search engine industry. If you want to get home improvement leads, you need to get Google right.

The numbers speak for themselves. In December 2014, Google held 65% of the market, compared to Microsoft's 19%, Yahoo's 11%, and Ask's adorable 2%. The numbers are even starker when you look at...